So 40 is the new 30, I say to the network executive. No, he explains, 40 is 30 with money

By Rob Long

12:01AM GMT 20 Nov 2005

'I'm sorry," I say into the phone. "I think one of us is going through a bad cell or something. I thought I heard you say that you'd like the main character to be older." I chuckle good-naturedly, and hope that my little joke will ease the tension. I'm on the phone with a television network, you see, getting notes on a script.

In Hollywood, writers don't get paid to write. They get paid to get notes. Writers - real writers, anyway - would probably write for free. But to get a writer to sit quietly and listen to someone - usually someone in an office, with a secretary, and a salary, and a name like "Josh" or "Kristin" - say something like: "Um, can we platform the characters a bit better earlier in the piece?" Or, "I'm just wondering about the hero's journey here," you really have to cough up some heavy coin.

But I've been doing this a long time, and I've learned that a little joke up front eases the tension and sends the message that while I am a writer, I am not insane, and will not respond to every note with shrieks and insults. Hollywood, despite its reputation as an amoral shark tank filled with sociopaths and cut-throats, is a get-along kind of place.

Confrontations, when they happen (and they happen rarely) occur mostly in bitchy letters sent between lawyers. You know the type: "Dear Bill: It puzzles me that you have yet to respond to my letter of last month, when, as you know, my client was asked to remove himself from the studio without fair notice or cause. Perhaps your client, the studio, is still vainly attempting to wiggle out of its legal obligations to buy out my client's contract as well as maintain the lease on his BMW 645i, but as I know you will have to agree, the 'morals clause' of the existing employment contract specifically excludes statutory rape…"

The point is, out here we like to be nice. So I make a little joke on the phone - "I thought I heard you say that you'd like the main character to be older" - because, I mean, how hilarious is that? A network executive asking for a character to be older? They're all about appealing to the young demographic, to the 18 to 34 crowd (and 34 at the absolute tippy-top), and to delivering to advertisers a fat slice of the richest, most brand-conscious pie. I mean, I've had a couple of shows on the air - good shows, too; funny, fresh, well-reviewed shows - that gathered respectably large audiences but were still cancelled. "Yes, a lot of people were watching," the network would say when they called to drop the dime, "but they were all way, way too old. The average age of one of your viewers was 42! We can't sell 42. So, um, maybe next time do a show about young people, okay?"

According to market research, at a certain age - they peg it, I think, at 35 - a person just suddenly knows who he is. What he likes to eat. Which beer he prefers to drink. What car he wants to drive, which paste he wants to brush his teeth with, and how he wants his underarms to smell. So after about 35, the average consumer is unreachable. No matter how much money a company spends trying to convince him to smell spicier or sexier, he's unlikely to change.

But the 18 to 34 crowd, apparently, are disloyal brand sluts. They hop and whore around the place, trying this new beer or that new car or body sprays and tooth whiteners: they can be bought, in other words. And that makes them desirable.

One month ago, when I was still in my 30s, a kind friend said to me in a voice both convincing and cheerful: "Hey! So you're turning 40! That's cool! 'Cause you know, 40 is the new 30!" Which really worked, actually. I mean, I bought it. All around me I saw childish, bouncy 40-year-olds getting tattoos and iPod Nanos and $600 blue jeans. I saw 40-year-old men with interesting, boyish haircuts wearing flip-flop sandals sliding down the beach path on their skateboards. Suddenly, women in their early 40s - and I'm being generous here - were texting each other during the Wilco concert and downloading ringtones. What up?, I thought to myself, as the kids say. I guess 40 really is the new 30. If not the new 28.

Until the next weekend, when I was getting a small, discreet tattoo on my left calf and noticed a young, fit guy in his early twenties wearing a T-shirt with a slogan in thick black lettering: "40," it read, "Is NOT the New 30."

Highly specific cruelty is always the most effective kind of cruelty, of course, and in a way, the people who make and market that particular T-shirt are doing us all a great service by nipping this 40-is-the-new-30 thing in the bud.

Apparently there are enough people who think that 40 is the new 30 to have inspired a nasty backlash - complete with T-shirts and Lord knows what else - from people who, from the looks of them, are probably not quite 30 themselves, and maybe want to enjoy being 30 without being crowded and jostled by a bunch of 40-year-olds who are refusing to leave the stage. But if 40 is the new 30 - meaning, I guess, that everyone moves down one and 30 is the new 20 - what does that do to the demographics of network television?

Back to my phone call: "No, you heard us right. We really need you to make the main character older." "Older?" I ask. "Older as in biological age?"

"Right. And we need to surround him with older people."

"But," I say, still not getting it, "the script we're talking about - the script you bought - is about young people in their 20s working at their first jobs."

"Can't it be about older people in their 40s working at their last jobs?"

"Um… I did that show for you. Five years ago. And you cancelled it because it skewed too old."

"We remember. Ironic how things change, huh?"

They could hear the baffled tone in my voice. "Look," they said, "we know this is weird. But we've just been crunching the numbers, and advertisers really want to capture the 35 to 50 demographic. Apparently, older people are now experimenting more with brands and fashion and personal appearance."

"Forty is the new 30," I say.

"No, 40 is 30 with money," they say. And then they hang up.

Make everyone older, I say to myself. Old is the new young. Weird turn of events. So I put away my skateboard, loaded a new playlist onto the iPod Nano, and got down to work. It was refreshing to finally be acting my age.

• Rob Long's latest book Set up, Joke, Set Up, Joke, will be published by Bloomsbury on Thursday (£9.99).